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Welcome to the social media in palliative care communities panel session. I’m Alex Smith, I blog at GeriPal with Eric Widera. Introduce panelists. After I say a few introductory remarks, I’ll pass the podium off to Christian Sinclair of Pallimed and Eric Widera, also from GeriPal.We debated the title for this presentation. Ultimately we decided that we wanted to emphasize three main points:Social media is a form of community buildingCreating an online presence is not a one off venture, it requires maintenance; andIn this day and age, you should have an online presenceIn order to determine who our audience was going to be today and what they are interested in hearing about, we solicited responses to an online survey. I’m going to share some of the results of that survey by way of introduction. I want to hear from you if your interests align with the respondents to our survey.

Why are you here? At 7am? All (5) of you?We had about 25 responses to our survey. Respondents were interested in hearing how social media can help you and your practice, face-to-face networking, and information on new and advanced forms of social media. I think we’ll all talk about how social media can help you, your practice, and the palliative care community. Christian and Eric will talk about advanced forms of social media, such as Twitter and Digg. We’re going to leave some time at the end for everyone to network. There will be more time for networking this evening in a bar called Lir at 8pm – Eric will give you the details at the end.

The majority of you said that you were beginning or intermediate users of social media.

Survey respondents were more comfortable using what I’d categorize as the older and more basic forms of social media and internet sites, such as youtube, itunes, facebook, and wikipedia.

Respondents were less comfortable with newer, advanced forms of social media, such as Twitter, Digg, StumbleUponIt, and Delicious. Many of these sites help you to “sift” through the explosion of information on the internet, and can also be harnessed to make your work go “viral.” Christian and Eric will talk more about these advanced forms in a bit.

Respondents were more likely to be casual users of blogs, meaning people who commented, than authors of blog posts. We’re going to take a Prochaska model approach and move you from whatever stage you are at to one stage higher – contemplating commenting – you should. Thinking about tweeting? Tweet.

We asked respondents what concerns they have about using social media…

Respondents were mostly concerned about privacy, both from patients and their families and from random people on the web. I hear this quite a bit. In fact, I heard it from the President of a major professional society – not AAHMP – another one that GeriPal cares about. I hear it from my wife, who never attaches her name to her comments on GeriPal. Here’s the deal. The only way to be completely safe is to be anonymous. If you post anonymously, at least you are contributing to the palliative care social media community. But if you put your name out there it adds legitimacy to your statements because (1) you are not just some random person, you are a person with a name, and (2) you can be held accountable for what you say. Furthermore, publishing your name lets other readers know who is in the community – it’s not just some anonymous commenter, it’s someone this blogger might actually get to meet, at a meeting like this.

I want to open it up to you all now for a few moments. Are there other questions, issues, or concerns that you would like us to address today?I’m going to hand it over to Christian now.